Cambodia

Aid for Trade: Donor & Partner Country Profiles

Creditor Reporting System (CRS) Profile

The WTO Task Force defined aid-for-trade projects and programmes that have been identified as trade development priorities in the recipient country's national development strategies. The Task Force underlined that clear and agreed benchmarks are necessary for the global monitoring of aid-for-trade efforts. To this end, it identified the following categories; (a) trade policy and regulations (incl. trade facilitation); (b) trade development; (c) trade-related infrastructure; (d) building productive capacity; (e) trade-related adjustment; and, (f) other trade-related needs.

The OECD Creditor Reporting System (CRS) database is used to track ODA flows from Development Assistance Committee (DAC) member countries. It offers the benefit of an existing data collection and a reporting system that can meet the need for enhanced monitoring identified by the WTO Task Force. The CRS can be used to track "proxies" of aid-for-trade volumes based on the categories identified by the Task Force. These proxies are covered by the CRS under the following three headings: (1) trade policy and regulations; (2) economic infrastructure (energy, transport & telecoms); and, (3) building productive capacity.

The OECD is in the process of adapting the CRS to include a new category dedicated to track aid to "other trade-related adjustment". The CRS however does not have a proxy for the Task Force category of "other trade-related needs".

A CRS profiles details the information the OECD holds on the DAC members' ODA commitments and briefly describes the CRS codes used to proxy aid-for-trade categories. The CRS codes record the sector of destination of an activity and not the nature of the activity per se.